According to Thompson on Hollywood Gerard Butler, Sam Worthington, and Matthew McConaughey have signed on to appear in Iraq war movie Thunder Run, which is based on David Zucchino’s novel Thunder Run – The Armored Strike to Capture Baghdad.

This won’t be your typical war movie however, as it has apparently been in development for five years and will be the “first ever conventional war film made to utilize this revolutionary facial and motion capture technology and state of the art CG and 3D.”

Here’s a synopsis of the story:

Thunder Run is the untold story of the dangerous and bloody capture of Baghdad by American Forces at the onset of the Iraq War. In April 2003, three battalions and fewer than a thousand men launched a violent thrust of tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles into the heart of a city of five million, igniting a three-day blitzkrieg, which military professionals often refer to as a lightning strike, or “thunder run.” In telling the story of the surprise assault on Baghdad- one of the most decisive battles in recent American combat history—this movie paints the harrowing picture of the soldiers on the front lines and the realities of modern warfare.

Simon West (Con Air, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider) will direct from a script by Black Hawk Down writers Robert Port and Ken Nolan. No word on when filming will begin, but the director is currently shooting The Expendables 2 so maybe sometime next year. The only setting we’ve seen an all CG war environment is in video games such as Call of Duty, so it’ll be interesting to see how this works out.